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Tom Kennedy cashed in 80,000 frequent flier miles so he and his wife could watch the Green Bay Packers take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas. Unfortunately for the Kennedys, their flight is scheduled to depart Thursday from Chicago, which has been crippled with snow and ice from a blizzard blazing its way across much of the nation.

With teams using more than 100 unique apparatuses to launch globular projectiles a half-mile or more, the 27th annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin event is our pick as November’s Weird Festival of the Month.

“We just can’t take a chance on not getting there to see our beloved Packers,” Kennedy said.

So the die-hard Packer fan bought airfare on another flight, this one leaving Minneapolis on Thursday. Now, the La Crosse, Wis., resident is hoping American cancels his initial flight so he can salvage his reward miles.

“If they cancel it, we get our miles back from American Airlines,” he said. “If they don’t, we lose out on the 80,000 miles we put down for the round-trip.”

Airlines canceled more than 6,000 flights Wednesday for the second day in a row. They gave up altogether flying in or out of Chicago, where for a while the only plane landing at O'Hare International carried the Blackhawks hockey team.

Over two days the airlines have canceled more than 13,000 flights, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.com. The cancellations were concentrated at O'Hare, one of the nation's most important air hubs.

Air traffic halted in Chicago
The decision by all the major carriers to stop flying in Chicago rippled out to airports around the country, because even travelers who aren't headed to Chicago catch connecting flights there on United or American, which use O'Hare as a hub. And snow and ice hampered flights elsewhere, too, with Southwest Airlines Co. canceling some Wednesday morning flights from Columbus, Ohio, and all of its morning flights from Dallas.

According to FlightAware, 474 flights in and out of Boston were canceled and 639 at New York LaGuardia. Overall, 1,356 flights were scrubbed at the three big New York-area airports because of snow and ice.

American Airlines was doubly troubled by a slowdown at its biggest hub in Dallas after ice coated the runways on Tuesday. The 1,600 cancellations by American and regional partner American Eagle added up to nearly half their schedule, spokesman Tim Smith said.

Most airlines stopped trying to fly at O'Hare by Tuesday night. A charter flight carrying the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team landed around noon. Swift Air loaded the Boeing 737 with extra fuel in case it needed to circle or divert, and found a window in the weather when it could land, said Steve Kasteler, who runs Swift's VIP charters.

The Blackhawks had played in Columbus Tuesday night, and need to be in Vancouver for a game on Friday. "It's critical for them to get home to be in their own beds tonight and get a good night's rest," Kasteler said.

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A handful of other charter flights landed at O'Hare later in the afternoon.

Airport snowplows worked all night to try to keep runways open, but they were almost no match for high winds and low visibility. Rosemarie Andolino, commissioner of the city's aviation department, was up in the old control tower that is now used to oversee snowplow and other airport operations. Wind gusts topped 50 mph.

"It was swaying. You can get to a point where you have to evacuate it. We were getting close to that," she said.

Airlines canceled hundreds of their Wednesday flights a day in advance. This avoids having travelers stuck at airports, and makes it easier to station crews and planes in the right places when flights begin again.

Some flights resuming Thursday
United Airlines was planning to resume departures from O'Hare by mid-morning Thursday. It added extra flights on wide-body planes to help get people moving.

"Our maintenance personnel have been out there all day today making sure that the aircraft that are here will be ready for startup in the morning," Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for United Continental Holdings Inc., which runs United and Continental.

Airlines scratched more than 4 percent of all their flights between November 2010 and January 2011. Once final January numbers are available, that's likely to be the highest rate of cancellations for that three-month period since 1995-96, according to government data and flight-tracking firm FlightView.

It's too soon to assess the impact on the airline's bottom lines. Storms in December sliced $10 million from United Continental's fourth-quarter operating profit of $160 million, and that storm shut down Continental operations at its Newark hub for two days.

Airlines are hoping it will be easier to rebook passengers caught in this week's storm, because there are fewer people flying than in the peak holiday period in December.

American had added about 14 extra flights to get people to and from the Super Bowl in Dallas on Sunday. The airline said most of those will fly as planned, since few of them pass through Chicago.

Pittsburgh Steelers fan Ebony Robinson, 24, is trying to make it to Dallas for a Super Bowl party. She was supposed to fly from New York to Washington to Dallas. She took the bus to Washington instead, where she was waiting for her flight at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday. It took her an hour and a half on the phone with U.S. Airways Group Inc. to change the first leg of her flight, but she didn't regret taking the bus instead.

"I'm sure it would have been canceled," she said.

Information from the Associated Press was included in this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Video: Ice, snow create travel snafu for Super Bowl fans

>>>roads into ice rinks just in time for rush hour. temperatures may dip by as much as 10 degrees in boston where over a foot of snow is expected to fall by day's end. that
flash freeze
could happen within the next hour and spell trouble for those planning to attend sunday's
super bowl
are facing flight cancellations. roads are solid ice. a transit shutdown and rolling power outages are affecting people. how will all of this possibly affect the
big game
itself?
janet shamlian
is live in arlington, texas. a few people behind you. i'm very familiar with the ice in my home state. that's my
little city
that i'm from not too far from there. the teams are there. the game will be played. it's a matter of how many people will be in the stands.

>>you know what? you're absolutely right about that. it the normal temperature for right now is 58 degrees. right now it's 16 degrees. windchill is 5 degrees. you can see the
ice rink
behind me. that exists all over the dallas
metro area
as they're dealing with the aftermath of this storm. as you said, rolling power outages all over the city, all over the
state of texas
right now. there's so much demand on the grid. you talked about travel. yeah, this stadium behind me seats about 100,000 people. most of them are flying in or trying to fly in over the next
48 hours
. the cold temperatures aren't going anywhere. that's hard to get rid of the ice.
love field
today canceled hundreds of flights. dfw is doing a little bit better. but if you have tickets and planning to be here, you might not get here till very close to gametime.

>>it is stunning to see and it's about 1:38
local time
there, so you have the few people who may have had to go to work are going to start to try to drive along the interstate.

>>no one's going to work today. no one is working.

>>i have to say something about my mom. she was unaware of the roing blackouts till she wondered why her home was getting so cold. she had no power. i hope my mom is warm in texas right now. thank

Irving, Texas

Miami, Oklahoma

A pickup truck that plunged off this snow-covered bridge near Miami, Okla, on Thursday sits in the Spring River. Three people were killed and five others injured.
(Gary Crow / Tulsa World via AP)
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Chicago

Iowa City, Iowa

A car sits abandoned in the median of I-380 between Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Iowa City on Thursday.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
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Commuters brave subzero wind chills as they return to work Thursday in Chicago. This week's blizzard dumped more than 20 inches of snow on the city.
(M. Spencer Green / AP)
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Chicago, Ill.

Chicago, Ill.

Snow piles up on the driver's seat of a stranded Chicago Transit bus on Wednesday after the door was left open during the overnight blizzard. The bus was abandoned on Lake Shore Drive.
(Kiichiro Sato / AP)
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Buffalo, N.Y.

Salem, N.H.

This car landed vertically into a snowbank after a multiple vehicle accident on Interstate 93 on Tuesday north of Salem, N.H. No one was injured.
(Tim Jean / The Eagle-Tribune via AP)
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New York City

Westfield, N.J.

An officer blocks the road to prevent pedestrians and traffic from approaching a fallen tree branch and power lines in Westfield, N.J., on Wednesday.
(John Makely / msnbc.com)
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Chicago

Milwaukee, Wis.

Students from Marquette University in Milwaukee to go to the Union Building in blinding snow as a blizzard warning hits southeast Wisconsin on Tuesday. Marquette canceled classes for Wednesday.
(Rick Wood / AP)
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Lancaster, Pa.

Owasso, Okla

Ila Dooley digs her car out to try and get to work on Tuesday in Owasso, Okla. Both of Oklahoma's major airports had to shut down due to the snow.
(Mike Simons / Tulsa World via AP)
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St. Louis, Mo

Snow plows work to remove ice from Interstate 55 on Tuesday in St. Louis, Mo. A blizzard warning was in effect for the St. Louis area, as was a forecast for up to 20 inches of snow.
(Tom Gannam / AP)
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Albany, N.Y.

Snow was also falling Tuesday in downtown Albany, N.Y. Most of upstate New York was under a winter storm warning and Gov. Andrew Cuomo opened the State Emergency Operations Center due to a forecast of up to 2 feet of snow in some areas.
(Mike Groll / AP)
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Denver, Co.

A woman braces against the cold and blowing snow as she crosses the street in the financial district of downtown Denver on Monday. School officials canceled schools in Denver for Tuesday.
(Ed Andrieski / AP)
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Pembroke, Mass.

Scott Buchanan scrapes snow off the roof of his house in Pembroke, Mass., on Monday as his yellow Lab Charlie holds a snow covered ball in his mouth waiting to play catch.
(Stephan Savoia / AP)
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Lexington, Ky.

Lexington, Ky., police and firefighters work at the scene of an accident after freezing rain moved coated roads there on Monday. A section of Georgetown Road was closed after two separate accidents involving five vehicles. Freezing rain turned the bridge into a sheet of ice.
(Charles Bertram / The Lexington Herald-Leader via)
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Editor's note:
This image contains graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing.